Maria Hoaglund wants to help 'take the fear away'

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally misidentified Maria Hoaglund as a chaplain and spiritual counselor at TRU Hospice Care Center at Balfour Senior Living in Louisville. Hoaglund now says she spent two weeks in orientation with TRU Community Care before being dismissed prior to the publication of this story. Officials at Balfour confirmed that Hoaglund never was employed by the senior living facility, but the CEO of TRU Community Care declined to say whether Hoaglund ever worked for the hospice organization.

Longmont's Maria Hoaglund insists there is "mystery and magic" to death.

As a spiritual counselor, Hoaglund said that death is not to be feared.

"This place (life) is hard," Hoaglund said. "This is our school and our lessons and karma and whatever you call it ... There's a great beauty and sacredness to dying and that process."

Hoaglund, 60, knows death well. She has spent over a decade working in hospices and with individuals as a spiritual counselor, minister, and therapist, helping people in the last stages of life.

Hoaglund grew up in Japan, the daughter of missionaries. She attended Yale and then went to seminary school at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California and started working in ministry. About a decade into that career, she had a revelation, while meditating.

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"I was not finding ministry, after about 10 years, very satisfying," Hoaglund said. "One day I was meditating and the word 'hospice' literally came to me. I thought, pay attention, that doesn't happen very often."

Within six months Hoaglund had taken a job at a hospice in Seattle, where she was living at the time, as a bereavement counselor — a counselor that deals with the families of passed patients. After a few more months, the spiritual counselor there took sabbatical, Hoaglund filled in, and her new mission came into focus.

"I took to that work like fish to water," Hoaglund said.

A few years of spiritual counseling, a four-year stint studying the metaphysical and spiritual in Sedona, and time spent writing two books ("The Last Adventure of Life" and "The Most Important Day of Your Life") led Hoaglund to Longmont.

She has been residing in Longmont since late last year, and runs her own energy healing studio at the The Healing Space, 519 Main Street, Longmont, called Energy Healing With Maria. She is also working on her public speaking, hoping to spread the word about death.

"I think (I'm here) because Boulder is such a death-conscious place," she said. "Since I've been here it's been, 'like, woah,' you know?"

Indeed, the Front Range does not shy away from discussions on death. Boulder County has a Death Cafe that meets with the intent to discuss death. Conversations on Death is another group run by Boulderites that, "creates collaborations that encourage awareness, education and access to resources that help people understand and work with the complexities of dying, death, and grief," according to the group's website.

Hoaglund said she hasn't had any issues getting speaking engagements and people have been responding well to her ideas.

"I just want to get better at speaking and at making a subject that has been taboo ... bring that subject out into the open and help people have a conversation in a much more healing and hopeful way," she said.

Hoaglund might also be the perfect person to help facilitate this conversation. Kate McGahan, who worked at a hospice in Sedona with Hoaglund, said that "she brings everything she is to everything she does."

McGahan said she read Hoaglund's books before even meeting her, and knew she wanted to work with her someday.

"I had already read her book," McGahan said. "I went to her for her healing services, she was great."

McGahan said that as a chaplain in Sedona, Hoaglund worked well with grieving families and those close to death.

"I have no doubt that was she was and is so good in terms of getting in their space and seeing things from their shoes and the healing she incorporated with the ministry she was providing," McGahan said.

A lot of Hoaglund's work as a spiritual counselor is just that, helping the dying and their families confront death in a way that is far from fearful and working to figure out what will help them best in that moment.

"Sometimes it's helping alleviate the fear," she said. "Sometimes it's helping with forgiveness issues ... I sometimes am their confessor or the one they can talk to about stuff they've buried forever. Sometimes it's a matter of putting a little ritual together to help with an actual passing."

Hoaglund said bringing this experience out of the hospice and to everyone can help change society's view of death.

"I feel that really, despite hospice and despite many people who have pioneered this field, the fear level in our culture is still very high," she said. "Bottom line I want people to look at death in new ways, new perspectives and take the fear away."

Hoaglund said that just as she saw herself as a bridge between Japan and the U.S. when she was living in Japan and working as a Japanese interpreter in Arizona, she now sees herself as a bridge to "that other world" while working with people dealing with death.

Hoaglund said her energy work also helps people in that way as well. She said it not only relieves physical pain but also opens them up to other ways of thought, other ways of healing.

One of her methods is called Emotion Code, where she uses magnets to help "people release old emotions." Another method is Running The Bars where she uses "points on the head to help people 'reset' their mental thought patterns and allow them to become open to receive more in their lives by releasing old limitations."

McGahan received energy healing from Hoaglund in Sedona and said it was transformative.

"I went through some tough time medically and she was calm and centered and excellent and her very unique healing practices," McGahan said.

Whether it's talking about the afterlife or trying to get people to re-evaluate their current life, Hoaglund said she doesn't see her profession as dark, but peaceful and transformative.

"I'm a harbinger of love," Hoaglund said. "Or a harbinger of more joy and more hope and more understanding.

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